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The Paradoxical Primate 2.0

In 2005 I wrote a little book entitled ‘The Paradoxical Primate‘.

It was my attempt to make some sense of why humans appear to be so contradictory in the ways they behave towards one another.

My interest came from two main pre-occupations.

My most immediate concern was trying to understand how we behave in organisations (in my case I was primarily interested in government organisations and public agencies).

The second concern was trying to understand why neither the general social science assumptions of humans as infinitely adaptable – the so-called ‘blank slate’ theory – nor the narrow assumptions of homo economicus, that we are all just ‘rational utility maximisers’, failed to explain our behaviour adequately.

This is The Paradoxical Primate 2.0. I have moved on, a bit, from the first book since I discovered Relational Models Theory (RMT) not long after I completed it. I’ll explain why here later. (More about RMT later).

It’s sort of a book and a blog – a blook? – and it will be a work-in-permanent-progress so come back and see how it changes. Enjoy.